At the same time as Women of the Wall hold their own celebratory service, leading rabbi calls on young women to rally against court ruling permitting non-Orthodox worship at the Kotel. Thousands are expected to attend.

Obviously, if the rabbis really cared about letting people pray in
peace, they wouldn't be recruiting girls to promote their way of
praying. What they really want is to keep their own power to oppress
others, and they are using these girls as unwitting tools.

Has Rabbi Shteinman considered the possibility that his plan might
backfire? The education these girls receive is calculated to keep them
as ignorant as possible of the world outside the enclave in which they
live. What might happen if these girls actually talked to WOW members?
What if they learned that there are honest, earnest, and sincere ways of
being Jewish different from the narrow confines in which they have been
kept? What if they met women who are not willing to subordinate their
identity to the control of men? Rabbi Shteinman might end up creating
rebels within his own camp! I encourage others to see the possible good
that might come from this absurd attempt to silence the WOW.

to pray at the wall just as men do. In ancient Greece women used to
forfeit the right of men to have sex with them till they honored them as
their equals. Just imagine those Ultra Orthodox or Orthodox being forced
to abstain from having sex, till all their demands of equality are met.
Women try it.!

Groups like Women of the Wall have to learn that they neither represent
all women or anybody else. Why shouldn't the orthodox community have
their say? It might be rabbis who are organising the campaign but these
girls are not being forced, they will be protesting because they believe
in what they are protesting over. Both sides are entitled to be heard
and so far we have heard plenty from WOW but very little from the
orthodox community who have been sitting on the benches waiting to see
how things play out.

I just needed to add an adendum- this was an initiative of Women FOR the
Wall, a group of women who care deeply about the kotel and the
traditions there, and also love our fellow jewish sisters at WoW, even
if we disagree with what they're doing. This massive tfilla gathering is
called to pray for unity of the Jewish people, and thats why women were
invited- because this is women telling women that WE want the kotel
remaining as it is, and though the WoW claim that they are liberating
the kotel for the women, they''re hurting other women in the process.

Prayers for the peace of Jerusalem. Some battlegrounds and warzones act
like magnets to disaffected people who flock there like mosquitoes to a
blue light. The enmity, hatred and power plays of a place draw in all
light. A downwardly spiralling vortex develops. Now in the year
2013/5773 we are presented with a situation in the Old City where
conflict seems to be assured due to the machinations of various
"leaders". I believe that G-d wants Jerusalem to be a city
of peace and healing for all people. A place of uplifting spiritual
thermals of potential. But you cannot heal in a place of conflict. The
schechina will not dwell where there is strife. If worship cannot be
done in a spirit of joy what then is it ?

Other nations should pass laws that say that Jews cannot pray out loud
or hold their Torahs or prayer shawls b/c it offends their traditional
Christianity or other religion to be near Jews. Let's see how long it
is before they realize how sick it is to stop someone of EITHER gender
from praying to their own god as they want to.

At the Church of the Sepilca in Jerusalem the priests from the different
Christian sects who reside their are constantly quarrelling and
sometimes it even gets violent and they hit each other withe
candlesticks and all sorts. As nobody trusted each other they got locked
in at night and the key is held by a Muslim. The problem in the case
with the prayers at the Kotel is WOW are not interested in religion,
they are a feminist movement and being granted a section for liberal
services will never be enough for them, they want to be in the orthodox
section provoking and getting themselves arrested to make a point. WOW
believe orthodox Judaism is oppressive to women because they are not
permitted to do all the same things as men. Only a man can read from a
Torah scroll in services, only a man wears a tallit or teffilin, men and
women are separated during services. They are feminists who have
declared a war on orthodox judaism. you can also bet that if the
Sharansky plan goes ahead and the plaza is extended to provide areas
for both liberal and orthodox service then WOW will come to the orthodox
section dressed in their talit wanting to pray from the Torah because
unless they stay in the media provoking the orthodox then their movement
and cause will fizzle away and die. So a reformist pray area might suit
people who are out to pray but it won't suit WOW who are out to provoke
so they can fight a political cause.

When WoW first started, a seminary girl I knew told me she and her
friends were going to go to the Wall to demonstrate appropriate prayer
to the Women of the Wall. "Demonstrate prayer," my dear
friend said. "You are accusing WoW of not having the proper
attitude about prayer . . .but if your prayer demonstration is okay,
what is your quarrel with theirs?"

Hey. That's me up there in the picture. And I take great offense to you
telling me that I wasn't praying. Women of the Wall come to the Kotel to
pray. We have been coming every single month without fail for 24 years.
At 7 in the morning. Our civil right to full prayer is denied. When we
are not at the Kotel we use all the means at our disposal in this
Democratic country to achieve the legal right to pray as a group out
loud, in the women's section at the Kotel, wearing tallit, tefillin and
reading from a Torah Scroll. Politics is one way to achieve this right
and there is nothing wrong and everything right about it.

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